


A Ship is Safe in Harbour

by bbcsherlockian



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, POV Sherlock Holmes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-10
Updated: 2014-01-10
Packaged: 2018-01-08 06:30:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1129411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bbcsherlockian/pseuds/bbcsherlockian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes requires a certain brand of danger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Ship is Safe in Harbour

John is safety.

John is warmth and comfort, preciously scalding cups of freshly brewed tea, all the space sewn lovingly between the knit of his jumpers, the softness on the inside of his lips, fried eggs and takeaway leftovers, the only home I will ever love.

(and yet)

There has always been something bristling under the surface, a danger that I learnt and promptly sought shortly after our first meeting, after the man with trust issues shot another human being in cold blood to save the ‘arrogant prick’ he barely knew. This danger, this fierce passion for adrenaline and to demonstrate deadly intent-- It pacifies me. Contents me. John’s danger is the safest thing I know.

Safe does not equate to boring, and I can only berate my younger self in his naiviety for thinking as such. But similarly, safe is not exciting, nor dull. Safe is the comfortable medium, a space where all bodies float above ordinarily mundane plains of cognitive and intelligent thinking. It’s a new concept that he has taught to me and I relish that.

Safe is what paracetamol is to cocaine.

I exist purely for dark chases through alleys, pain which clarifies in its intensity, the sharp tang of blood and the simple high of intellectual recount in the presence of a loaded gun. Danger that is not his allows me to breathe, and I am suffocating. He has tamed the untamable with gentle touches and far too pleasant caresses.

(I hate it)

That, out there. That’s what I need. The rugged streets, the living with so many stories written in the folds of their clothes and the smudging of their makeup, the dead with so many tales scrawled in every trace of blood under hardened fingernail, the murderers - so ignorant and blissfully complicated-- I hate the claustrophobia and the stupidity and the whole of london and her population vehemently, but it rushes through every vein so elegantly and its danger sparks fire in the places where his does not. 

He is my safety net but I smuggled with me a knife and I am slashing through every cord with purpose because here, here in this sanctuary all the flames have already been doused.

I have not grown bored of him - tired of his sparks and peacefully glowing embers - but there is a section of my mind that pinpoints his location subconsciously, that ties me down in a world where everyone else already has strings.

(but I have a knife)

I could remain and be willfully coddled further into domesticity and a danger that all my cells developed resistance to a long time ago. I could remain and be happy by his side until the end of my life, forever wondering if it was enough to merely be content. I could remain here, in my own epitome of safety.

But that’s not what ships are for.


End file.
